Policing Free Speech Takes Up Half Of The Force’s Time

“As people have moved their shopping online and their communications online, they’ve also moved their insults, their abuse and their threats online, so I see that it won’t be long before pretty much every investigation that the police conduct will have an online element to it.. in a typical day where perhaps they deal with a dozen calls, they might expect that at least half of them, whether around antisocial behaviour or abuse or threats of assault may well relate to social media, Facebook, Twitter or other forms.”

Headded:

“People throughout history have shouted abuse at each other and had disagreements and arguments and possibly said things that they regret later and the police have never investigated every disagreement between everyone. So we have to be careful here that there’s a line that needs to be drawn and if something is serious and it’s a crime and someone is genuinely threatened or in the case of domestic abuse – maybe they’re being coerced and treated deliberately in this way as a sort of punishment by a partner – that’s a serious issue that we need to take on.”

Again, no arrests were made. Police only got involved to nick West for telling a black woman on a South London tram to “get back to their own country” and effing and blinding at her. Nasty stuff. But threatening to kill the apparent bigot, saying you’re going to stab her and make her children motherless, is fine.